Raid Finder: Day One
I used the Raid Finder for the very first time on Monday night. It was an… instructive experience.
Dogpile.
One thing that I learned about myself is the fact that I felt compelled to seek out raid videos/strategies even for LFR difficulty. It is not (just) about insulating myself from group embarrassment, it is about mitigating that awful feeling of not knowing what I am doing. I hate that feeling. At first I believed the feeling to be unique to multiplayer games, as I certainly do not hit up GameFAQs or Wikis the moment I get to a boss fight in a single-player game. Indeed, wouldn’t that be cheating? Or, at least, cheating myself from the actual game.
But you know what? I hate that feeling even in single-player games. If I am dying to a boss repeatedly and have no idea why, or there does not seem to be any clues as to different strategies I could try, I most certainly hit up Wikis. I enjoy logic puzzles as much as (or more than) the next guy, but I must feel certain that logic is applicable to the situation. With videogames, that is not always a given: quests that you cannot turn in because you didn’t trip a programming “flag” by walking down a certain alleyway or whatever. There was a Borderlands 2 quest that I simply looked up on Youtube because I’ll be damned if I walk across every inch of a cell-shaded junkyard for an “X” mark after already spending 10 minutes looking it over. Playing “Where’s Waldo” can be entertaining, but not when you have to hold the book sideways and upside down before Waldo spawns… assuming you are even looking at the right page.
I digress.
Hey, it could happen to anyone!
Things got off to a nice start in LFR when the dog fight consisted of just tanking all three dogs in a cleave pile the entire time. The second boss seemed to have an inordinate amount of health, but he too dropped without doing much of note. I died twice to some insidious trash on the way to the troll boss; those bombs are simply stupid in a 25m setting, as I found it difficult to even see them among all the clashing colors and spell effects. Final boss dropped pretty quickly as well, although I almost died a few times towards the end once people stopped coming into the spirit world with me.
By the way, the queue for the 1st raid finder was 15 minutes for DPS. Might have been a “Monday before the reset” thing.
I joined a guild healer for the 2nd raid finder immediately afterwards, although the average wait time of 43 seconds was a bit off. Was killed by a combination of friendly fire and damage reflection during the first boss, but he otherwise went down quickly. I managed to avoid falling to my death during Elegon (thanks Icy-Veins!), but was killed by an add the 2nd tank never picked up; that will teach me to do something other than tunnel the boss. The third boss… made little sense. I spent a lot of time killing adds, as I could not quite understand what was up with the Devastating Combo thing other than I must have been doing it wrong. Eons later, the bosses died.
It is becoming somewhat of a running joke for my guildies since coming back on how much random loot I pull in. The prior week I got ~8 drops from my first 5 random dungeons, for example. This time around I got three epics from my first two LFR forays, all three of which came from the bonus rolls. I was not around for the Cata LFR days, but suffice it to say, I would not have likely came away with that much loot in a more traditional PuG.
Overall, LFR was a pleasant experience. While I can certainly empathize with the criticism of LFR – it was pretty ridiculously easy – I can definitely see the logic behind Blizzard’s moves here. Some raid is better than no raid, low-pop realms like Auchindoun-US wouldn’t support a robust raid PuG community, and to an extent even the “nothing ever drops!” LFR sentiment encourages organized guild raiding in a roundabout manner. Whether this remains satisfying in any sort of long-term manner remains to be seen, but honestly, it is better than the alternative of… what else, exactly? Running dungeons ad infinitum?
Review: Warhammer 40k: Space Marine
Game: Warhammer 40k: Space Marine
Recommended price: bundle/$0
Metacritic Score: 74
Completion Time: ~5 hours
Buy If You Like: Warhammer 40k, mindless 3rd-person action
Something about the juxtaposition of religious iconography and high technology gets the juices flowing.
Let me start out by saying that I am a huge fan of the Warhammer 40k universe. The setting gets a lot of flak for being grimdark and violent and possibly even juvenile, but whenever I start hearing phrases like “Adeptus Mechanicus” and the “God-Emperor of Man” I put on my game-face and settle down for some fun. Up to this point, I have almost religiously played the Dawn of War games and all the expansions up to Space Marine and generally loved them all (Dark Crusade being my 200+ hour ultimate favorite).
After the ending credits to Space Marine, I came away… well, curiously disappointed.
You take on the role of Captain Titus, one of three Ultramarines sent as vanguard to the fleet coming to the rescue of a besieged Forge World. The basic game structure is 3rd-person mayhem in the styling of Devil May Cry/God of War without the fighting depth, or Darksiders without the exploration/puzzles. Part of the promotional campaign involved making fun of other 3rd-person cover-based shooters (“Cover is for the weak”), but around the 30% mark it becomes quite clear that the health regeneration from executing stunned enemies won’t, ahem, cover the increasing volume and severity of ranged fire. In fact, in the late stages of the game, you will be reduced to peaking your head around crates to take pot-shots at uber-laser troops while actively running away from anyone trying to melee you.
There are a few cool moments for 40k fans, and the levels where you get access to Jetpacks really cements the feeling that I’d love an MMO or more free-ranging game in this universe. In between these moments of fun, however, are about 60+ thinly-veiled elevator loading screens, repetitive battles, large empty spaces devoid of any reason to explore, and a vague sense of hollowness. Darksiders gets away with long stretches of nothing happening because you’re solving a puzzle, but here you’re frequently just stomping around for 5+ minutes inbetween the small pockets of button-mashing. Watching my hero units in Dawn of War felt more exciting than playing as one in Space Marine.
Bottom line, if you were primarily interested in Space Marine because you like the Warhammer 40k setting, you can safely skip this entry into the franchise and have missed nothing of note. If you don’t care about the 40k setting, well, you aren’t missing anything either.
The First of Many?
Had my first Cross-Realm Zone fail on Tuesday night.
It was around 11:30pm when I was doing some last-minute AH shopping before logging off, that I saw the “LFM Sha” in Trade Chat. I whispered the guy and asked if he really thought he’d get enough people at this late an hour (on this dead realm of all places). He seemed reasonably confident, so I joined. Soon enough, I witnessed the source of his confidence: you can apparently form cross-realm raid groups to fight world bosses.
I was shocked. Yeah, I knew CRZ was a thing, and I knew you could group with cross-realm people. But raids on world bosses? I am not sure of the mechanics of the inviting process, whether he had friends log onto alts on other realms and advertise in Trade or whatever, but we had 40 people in less than ten minutes. It almost makes me wonder why Blizzard even bothers with world bosses under this paradigm – it felt just like an LFR system minus the automation.
Definitely configuring Grid next time.
The fight went fine, with the Sha dying just slightly faster than the raid wipe well in process. I died in the final moments and elected to not release just to be sure; TBC has a way of carving archaic rulesets into one’s permanent memory. I received the purple box, made an extra roll via Elder Charm, and received a thoroughly inadequate sum of gold. At this point, I released and started running back. “So and So is attempting to resurrect you.” Accepting the (Mass) Resurrection, I prepared to loot the quest item from the corpse… what the hell? The Sha has respawned?!
The Sha appeared to be alive and well, with nary a corpse to be seen. I imagine what happened was that those of us on Auchindoun had been pulled into someone else’s realm and defeated the Sha there. I am not sure whether the transition back to Auch was due to accepting the rez, or the person whose realm the Sha died on leaving the raid, or whatever else. Bottom line: no quest item, and no way to even determine where the raid boss’s body I just killed was located.
It’s been 24 hours since then, and the queue has moved 4 minutes.
My guild mate and I put in our tickets, but it remains to be seen whether CustServ will honor our requests. Well, not Joeses’ request, but perhaps mine. Regardless, I suppose the CRZ mechanic made the kill possible (and the chance at random loot) where it would not have happened otherwise. Of course, so would simply putting the world boss in a more formal LFR setting. All the CRZ seemed to do in this instance was introduce novel ways of getting screwed.
Unintended Main
I hit 90 last week on the paladin.
The funny thing is that the reputation concession to alts (i.e. 100% rep gains if you buy a token at Revered) has resulted in some strange behavior on my part. I still don’t like the paladin very much; I chose it as my first 90 because of other considerations, like how it was my only toon with max Archeology (mainly the BoA weapons). Combat as Retribution still feels clunky, especially if I miss with Crusader Strike. Exorcism, Judgment, Crusader Strike, then either Inquisition or Templar’s Verdict, then… wait for procs. Having a 6-second window to Flash of Light after a mob death is infinitely worse than a warrior’s intuitive and satisfying Impending Victory.
Regardless, since I am 90 though, I find myself doing all the dailies that I can. Not just because they are dailies, e.g. the sense that I fall further behind in my future, hypothetical endeavors, but also because I am already near Honored (or well into Honored) with these factions. It feels a waste to start leveling someone else up before getting the 100% rep boost. And thus I continue playing a class I no longer love, earning rewards I can’t use (Coins, Valor, Spirits of Harmony), for the possible betterment of a new main I haven’t even chosen yet.
Obviously I’m getting some form of entertainment, but it is not at the desired level.
On Sunday, I ran ~4 heroics with guildmates and walked out with 8-10 pieces of gear; I zoned in there with maybe two pieces of 450 quest blues and the rest crafted PvP gear. Ended up getting two Strength 2Hs, boots, chest, plus a smattering of tanking drops. As far as I could tell, my DPS on the runs was just shy of 40k, which I am assuming is decent.
Maybe the universe is trying to tell me something. In which case, let me tell the universe: make Retribution more fun.
Entrenchment
I have been collecting some of the Ghostcrawler tweets in regards to MoP alt-unfriendliness and the overall Blizzard pivot away from alts and back to mains, e.g. entrenchment of old subs vs new ones.
Q: Is the plan in Mists to have raiders go through each raid and let the new ones pile up or use LFR to leapfrog tiers?
A: Want to err on the side of the former. If you want to do 5.2 raid, you can gear up in 5.0 LFR. (source)
Q: Upgradeable gear is okay for honor gear, but it shouldn’t be for Conquest, as it’ll take months to catch up. Thoughts?
A: Problem with catch up (PvE or PvP) is it encourages everyone to play less. We like playing more to feel like it’s worth it. (source)
Q. is there any point in forcing people to be revered with golden lotus to do shado pan dailies?
A. Didn’t want fresh 90s to have to do GL and K and AC and SP and go crazy, then finish in a month and have nothing to do. (source)
Q. Do you want people to be entertained or do you want people to grind? For many the two are mutually exclusive.
A. Big challenge to MMO dev: players say they want quality but may also unsubscribe if they don’t have enough quantity. (source)
Q: How do you feel about the players getting to 90 just now and not being able to play arena competitively due to being behind
A: We want to reward players who keep playing. Too often in the past catch up was so easy that it trivialized accomplishments. (source)
Q. But you brought this trivialization of content yourselves starting with patch 3.2 >.> … what have you learned since then?
A. We learned not to let players catch up so trivially that it negates everyone else’s accomplishments. (source)
Q. Greg, you need to stop blaming the wrong things for cataclysm failures. Catch up mechanics dont hurt the game
A. We just disagree on that. I understand you have very strong feelings about how things should work. (source)
Q. efficiency is more fun than non-efficiency. non-efficiency = time wasting = frustration.
A. I don’t buy it. Some of the most fun things in life are stupidly inefficient. I think being inefficient in an MMO is a social thing. (source)
A. We call it the Mechanar syndrome. Players didn’t farm Mechanar because it was our crowning achievement in dungeon design. (source)
Q: linear progression was the worst idea you ever could return to.. you leave behind lots of alt-players and returners.
A. We understand that. But the alternative is that other players feel their accomplishments have no meaning if rapid catch up exists. (source)
I am having a difficult time trying to comprehend at which station Ghostcrawler’s logic train got derailed. “Catch-up” mechanics do not invalidate accomplishments; new raiding tiers do. Nobody cares about your Tier N achievements when Tier N+1 comes out, because why would they? Progression and envy are ever-moving targets, so “catch-up” is irrelevant to those desiring one or the other (or both). So we are left with… who? The people disappointed that their hard, planned obsolescent work was rendered meaningless by the next patch but “oh wait, at least I can try the next tier right away so it was worth something“?
No, it just doesn’t fit. What fits is that in the very nervous design meeting that took place two years ago when Cata was hemorrhaging players, it was decided that every goddamn trick in the book to extend playing time was tossed up on the Mists whiteboard. Burning Crusade slideshows were dusted off and replayed. “Things for Player to Do at Cap” was underlined, twice. Removing catch-up mechanisms does, in fact, “generate” several additional raid playthroughs that would not have existed otherwise. But in that TBC playbook, Blizzard glossed over the postmortem section that warned “You can never go home again.”
Raids (etc) have shelf-lives independent of their necessity for linear progression; old raids become mentally reduced to roadblocks, just something you have to endure on your way to where you actually want to be, i.e. with everyone else. It’s tough being proud of accomplishments nearly everyone else achieved months ago, nevermind how the first boss of the next tier has drops that blows your endgame gear out of the water. And this is besides the fact that the longer the raid has aged, the smaller the pool of people willing/available to run it. Queues go up. Mistakes are less tolerated. It becomes a vicious, decaying spiral… which is precisely why the “Current Tier” model of Wrath and Cata was the better design.
I get that people are sad that raids like Ulduar become irrelevant in mere months. But that happens even in linear progression models! Ulduar ceases to be Ulduar when the people zoning in are just there to get a high enough ilevel to unlock ToC. The magic of these places is not wholly contained in the encounters themselves, but in the Time as well. Being there when the whole server was struggling to defeat the same bosses, congratulating each other on loot, and knowing that each gear drop was the best in the game (at that time). That was when Ulduar was Ulduar.
You can’t go home again.
So, yeah. I don’t buy it, Ghostcrawler. Even if the devs truly believe they are going back to linear progression out of deference to the high school quarterbacks of the moot accomplishment world, they are going about it in the wrong way. iLevel gating was a huge improvement over attunements precisely because it was more flexible. Removing or reducing the catch-up mechanisms is simply bringing back the Keys, complete with all its (alt-unfriendly) baggage. If Mists does not lose players over this – relegating the new player or recently returned to the back of the bus under mountains of required, outdated content – it will be because other areas of the game improved enough to compensate.
Book Micro-Reviews: Dresden Files, Codex Alera
The Dresden Files (series)
Author: Jim Butcher
Genre: Modern Fantasy
Books: 1-14
The Dresden Files series follows Harry Dresden, a private investigator in Chicago who also happens to be a wizard. Each of the books follows along the prototypical mystery/whodunit framework, presenting 2-3 seemingly unrelated events that each carry the possibility of death/cataclysm before a resolution at the end. Despite each books’ fairly standard formulaic structure, where the Dresden Files series really shines is with its down-to-earth characters, the witty/hilarious dialog, and straight-forward style. I was at first put off with the “kitchen sink” approach used when presenting the supernatural (demons, fairies, vampires, oh my!) but again, the writing definitely saves what might otherwise come across as convoluted.
Overall, I feel pretty good in recommending this series. Compared to a lot of other fantasy series out there, the Dresden Files are considerably less dense but no less satisfying. I am definitely hoping that book 15 (and beyond) comes out sooner rather than later.
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Codex Alera (series)
Author: Jim Butcher
Genre: Fantasy
Books: 1-6
When a friend recommended this series to me, the only thing I knew going in was the following paragraph from the Wikipedia entry:
The inspiration for the series came from a bet Jim was challenged to by a member of the Delray Online Writer’s Workshop. The challenger bet that Jim could not write a good story based on a lame idea, and Jim countered that he could do it using two lame ideas of the challenger’s choosing. The “lame” ideas given were “Lost Roman Legion”, and “Pokémon”.[1]
Reading that will either intrigue you or turn you off immediately, but let me just mention that the Codex Alera series won Jim Butcher that bet, in my opinion.
The series itself follows the life of Tavi, a particularly clever boy who nevertheless was born without the ability to use magic in a world where everyone has an elemental familiar. As with Jim Butcher’s other series, the Dresden Files, the Alera books lean towards a sort of detective model that is very much Butcher’s style; you can definitely expect a lot of long trains of logic and counter-logic. It is not all cerebral however, as there will frequently be 10+ page fight scenes that may or may not leave you at the edge of your seat.
Overall, I enjoyed these books. Like many fantasy series, I felt it started somewhat slow and required a bit of acclimation to the world being presented. I was hooked by the second book though, enjoyed the natural progression, and quickly finished the rest thereafter.
Path of Least Resistance
Out of the multitudes of derogatory, loaded phrases, “Path of Least Resistance” is perhaps the one I dislike the most (“welfare epics” is another top contender). The phrase, in a bit of cognitive Jujitsu, attempts to style strength as weakness. “Path of Least Resistance.” Is that not… efficiency? Optimization? Are we supposed to be seeking the path of most resistance? How is that different from simply Doing It Wrong?
The phrase and its implied meaning is more than contradictory though, it’s often hypocritical as well. At its base, it means expending the smallest amount of effort for the greatest gain. Ask those players who bemoan their peers taking the Path of Least Resistance how they feel about “Play to Win.” Is it “cheating” or unsportsmanlike to spam an uncounterable move over and over to ensure victory? Playing to Win is (usually) the Path of Least Resistance. Fair fights are more difficult, and thus more risky – something to be avoided if possible to make the wins easier and more assured.
Those using Path of Least Resistance as a negative attempt to levy moral failings upon players not even participating in the same game as them; the only game in which the Path of Least Resistance is a negative is the game inside the accuser’s own head. Efficiency and efficacy are, in fact, virtues. It is fine to critique game design that results in unintended or counter-intuitive behavior, such as RvR merry-go-rounds instead of gritty trench warfare. But the critique must always be of the rules, not the minds or motivations that master them.
MoP Thus Far
It has been weeks, and I just hit level 88 on the paladin.
I have established a pretty stable routine based on daily profession cooldowns, which is a good sign to anyone that wishes me to continue logging in everyday. Scribe, Tailor, and then JC/Alchemy. I mentioned before that the AH on Auchindoun-US is pretty garbage, and things have not especially improved since that first impression. Instead, I have adapted. Glyphs, for example, were a market I avoided previously because the value for my time just was not there with the botting and the undercut wars. Now? The competition is basically one baron with a 699g fallback that I undercut by 100-200g depending on my mood. In fact, since I’m just using Auctionator instead of a more robust addon, I simply order all glyphs by highest price and use that as my guide for production.
By the way, many virtual tears were shed when I realized how utterly useless my 50 stacks of banked Twilight Jasmine and hundreds of other Cataclysm herbs became. The two dozen stacks of Pyrite Ore got prospected into gems which turned into rings which turned into nicely priced Enchanting materials. Blackfallow Ink, though? Good for only a single glyph… and Mysterious Fortune Cards. Better than vendoring the herbs, I suppose. I hope.
Something I always find interesting is how much Blizzard changes the paradigms with each expansion. After two straight expansions of alt-friendliness, Mists is the most alt-unfriendly expansion I have ever seen. The whole Spirit of Harmony thing in particular is maddening as someone with alts of every profession. Specialized crafting components being BoP is nothing new (Frozen Orbs say hi), but what is somewhat new is how early in the process they are required for goods. Level 85 blue Blacksmithing weapons requiring 2 Spirits at skill level 545? Why?
Speaking of crafting, I don’t know how I feel about its present trajectory. Blizzard has been simplifying the process for years, of course, but my return after a 1.5-year break makes the culmination stand out. Specifically: do people really like random-stat crafted gear? Or how Ghost Iron is basically the de facto resource for all Blacksmithing? Or completely interchangeable Enchanting ingredients? Some historical aspects of crafting were becoming increasingly obtuse as the game aged – Enchanting rods come to mind – but there is something to be said about requiring more than two moving parts and/or working towards a specific item. Hell, I was immensely relieved when I saw the level 90 crafted JC rings/necklaces were specific things with concrete stats.
Anyway, my immediate goal is to get the paladin to 90 so that I can unlock the farm. While that sentence was a bit depressing to type, it is more painful to me knowing that while I make it a point to log in daily for the profession cooldowns, I am continuously missing all the easy Spirits of Harmony (etc) that I could be gaining while I putz around looking for a new main. I have not tanked on the paladin yet – part of me rebels against the necessity of memorizing yet more mob/boss abilities – but I am definitely not a real fan of the Retribution rotation/kit anymore. At least compared to how fun/fast I was mowing down mobs as the warrior anyway.
Although… well, I did have a bit of a giggle Bubble-Hearthing away from two separate gank attempts. Just like old (TBC) times.
New Year
Welcome to a new year of In An Age.
I am going to skip armchair prognosticating and instead focus on some goals/long-term plans. You may or may not have noticed that in my “Currently” sidebar, I have been listing more things than simply videogames. Since I have a website and write game reviews already, I figure that I may as well belt out a few words about what I thought about the books and anime I have been consuming too. There are plenty of more dedicated anime/book review websites out there though, so I am sticking to a “Micro-Review” format that is basically 1-3 paragraphs to give you the gist of what I thought about the series and whether you might like it.
I have not yet decided whether these “off-topic” Micro-Reviews will hit the front page, so to speak. On the one hand, you folks are here because you see some redeeming feature in my various pontifications, so why not have some more? On the other hand, this started out as a gaming blog and I wouldn’t want to… you know, fuck it. This shit will hit the Front Page when I feel like it, and won’t when I don’t. Nobody paints Baby into a corner.
Other than that nonsense, I expect to continue playing WoW and PlanetSide2 for the next several months, along with possibly checking into Dust 514 (now that have a PS3). I have Steam games coming out the ass, so there will be plenty of those sort of reviews/impressions coming too. And, of course, there will be plenty what I enjoy best: arguing with people over the internet.
If you liked what you read in 2012, you ain’t seen nothing yet basically will get more of the same in 2013.
In An Age 